Author: Robyn

I was informed this morning by my unhappy knee that trying to beat my best walking time yesterday was perhaps not the smartest move. Luckily, my knee wasn’t hurting badly, but I could tell that if I tried to exercise, it would rapidly get worse, so I didn’t today. I’m going to have to do some extra walking next week to get over the 100 mile mark for outside walking in March, so I hope the damn knee is better tomorrow. What’s odd is that this isn’t the same knee that hurt last time, so they’re taking turns, lucky me.

Hm. I think that paragraph belongs in the diet journal.

One of Fred’s employees’ wife had a baby last week or the week before, a boy, and they named it Coye. And I was passing a church this morning and the sign in front said "Welcome to the world, Lakely!" Coye and Lakely. Doesn’t anyone ever name their kids anything normal these days, like Bobby or Susan? I mean, Coye? What kinda name is that? (The way my luck runs, I have a reader named Coye being incredibly offended right now)

Fred and I chose the names of our future child/ren way before we ever met – Seth Forrest and Samantha Jayne. I still like Seth Forrest (yes, that Forrest), but I’m leaning toward Molly Jayne for a girl these days, because it’s such a lovely, old-fashioned name. I don’t know, though, because I ended up changing my mind on the spud’s name less than a week before she was born. The ex and I had decided on Jessica Leigh months before, but another name popped into my head, and I knew that that was her name. It’s as if she told me, that’s how certain I was.

For years and years, I swore that if I ever had a son, I would name him Ren. I wonder where I picked that one up.

Actually, I’d really like to name a boy Jack, but since that’s Fred’s stepfather’s name, I don’t want to piss off his dad (not that his dad would necessarily get pissed, but you never know).

Oh shit, y’all probably think I’m pregnant or something, don’t you? Nope, sorry to disappoint. Amy is, though. Congrats to Amy and Andy!

I used to just loathe my name when I was a young and stupid child, because I wanted to be Jaime Sommers, the Bionic Woman. For a while I told everyone that was my name and was the only name I’d respond to. They indulged me for a while but then got annoyed and refused to play any more. I also hated my name because every else’s name in the family ended with a "y" sound. Tracy, Randy, Debbie… and Robyn. And everyone always misspelled my name. People still misspell my name, even people who read my journal and send me email. They send email to robyn@hiwaay.net and start with "Hi Robin!", and it cracks me up. Plus, god knows it’s impossible to find anything personalized with the correct spelling of my name.

As a result, the spelling of others’ names is of particular interest to me. I’d be no good on Survivor, because we’d be trekking to Tribal Council, and I’d be saying "So, you spell it J-E-R-I or J-E-R-R-Y, or what? Oh, no reason!" And everyone would be misspelling my name when they voted me off, and I’d be in front of the camera bitching and whining about that at the end of the show. "I didn’t want to be on the show with a bunch of dumbasses who can’t even spell my name anyway! Fuckers!"

Alright, the rambling’s over. Let the weekend begin!

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I checked out weather.com last night before we took the spud to her flute lessons, and then threw a bit of a hissy fit. "Fucking motherfucking asswipes!" I snarled, stomping around and waving my arms.

"What?" Fred asked, turning around to stare at me.

"Earlier today, weather.com said it was going to be SUNNY tomorrow, and now they’re saying we’re going to have MOTHERFUCKING SCATTERED SHOWERS!" I yelled, stomping and waving some more.

"Well, it’s not like they control the weather," Fred pointed out reasonably.

Don’t you hate it when someone tries to be reasonable in the midst of your tightly choreographed hissy fit?

"Shut up!" I hissed and went stomping off upstairs to set the vcr to tape Survivor.

Luckily, Mother Nature heard my tantrum and was sore afraid, ’cause it turned out to be pretty damn nice.

And I cut 4 minutes off my walk this morning. Well, I usually do it in 98 – 103 minutes (depending on how long I have to wait to cross the street, and how many doggies there are to stop and pet), and I did stop and pet two dogs, PLUS there’s that 3-minute cool-down walk at the end, so really I’m doing a 4 mph pace, wouldn’t you say?

I wish.

So was last night’s Survivor lame, or what? The only thing I found interesting (and funny as hell) was Ogakor’s first night, when Colby’s snoring kept everyone up all night. Oh, and Kimmi and Alicia’s argument over the chickens, when Alicia did the head-bob-and-finger-wave. I love that Alicia!

I’m glad it’s going back to Thursday nights next week, because the spud has flute lessons on Wednesday evenings, and we don’t get home until after Survivor has started, so we have to set up the vcr to tape, and THEN we have to wait until the show’s over to watch it.

Y’all know that the only reason they even bothered to put that stupid filler show on is so that the last show will be on during May sweeps, right? I’d suspected as much and had my suspicions confirmed on the TWA Survivor thread this morning.

That’s just damn lame. Not lame enough to get me to stop watching, you understand, but lame nonetheless.

 

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Did everyone go right out and buy the new Stephen King book, Dreamcatcher? They happened to have it at Sam’s, so I picked it up, but make no mistake – I would have made a special stop at the bookstore if need be. It was a lot cheaper at Sam’s, though – less than $16. I’m currently trying to finish up my monthly pile of magazines so I can get started on Dreamcatcher, and Fred’s racing through the books he’s reading now, trying to beat me to it.

Fortunately, I have many more lazing-around-the-house-reading hours in the day than he does.

I’m so damn ready for the weather to start warming up. Parts of Alabama had a thick layer of snow this morning, and although we didn’t have snow, we had FUCKING cold driving rain – in fact, it was so cold and nasty out that I didn’t walk outside this morning, and that certainly doesn’t please me.

I’m walking outside tomorrow though, come hell or high water. And judging by the bridge I drove over on my way to Sam’s this morning, there’s plenty of high water to go around.

So, since we reformatted my hard drive (NOT the computer, I am told, we didn’t reformat the computer, we reformatted the HARD DRIVE, so says Mr. Stickler for Unimportant Details. Whatever.), I was able to reinstall Napster. I couldn’t get on anymore because when I tried I was informed that I was a Very Bad Person and had been reported as having renegade songs on my computer, and they’d only reinstate my Napster rights if I filled out this form detailing my name, address, phone number, email address, bra size, blood type, and sent it to them along with my firstborn child. Being the wily criminal type, I refused to do any such thing because I KNOW that what would happen is that one day while I was sitting slack-jawed in front of the computer, they’d bust into the house with a battering ram and seize my computer, Fred’s computer, the spud’s computer, our stereos, our Jeeps, and – for good measure – Miz Poo, so they could sell everything and send the proceeds to Lars Ulrich.

I’m on to their game. Not much gets by me, nosirree.

So I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Napster, hoping that they wouldn’t realize I was the same old me, but they did. The program left something sneaky behind so that when I tried to sign on as Bessie May, a little flag popped up somewhere that told them I was still me. The reformatting worked, though, and I’m back in the saddle again.

The bitch of it is that I can’t think of a damn thing to download. I’ve been carrying around a mental list for two months now, and as soon as I got back into Napster, the list disappeared. I did happen to think of downloading Tiny Dancer, since we watched Almost Famous this past weekend, and I just adore the singalong on the bus. In fact, I may have to buy the damn movie just for that scene. I downloaded the Elton John version, and then I downloaded the version Dave Grohl did on – what’s that show with Craig Kilbourne? Late Night or something? – well, that’s where Dave Grohl sang it, anyway, and it’s pretty damn good. You should go download it, too.

Ever since I downloaded it, the song – the chorus, really – is looping through my mind, and it’s driving me NUTS. Could be worse, I guess.

Hold me closer, tiny dancer…

That was a good closing line, but I need to add here that I got an email update from the people who are running the 3-Day in Atlanta, and I have $750 accumulated so far! I’ll have a page listing all my sponsors (first name, last initial, city) in the next few days (weeks)(months), so keep an eye out for it. Thank you so much, everyone!!!

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We tried tofu again last night. Fred made tofu parmagiana, and it was alright, if a tad bland. We’re not giving up though, not us! Later this week, I’ll be making curry-cajun tofu, and hopefully the tofu will soak up the curry-cajun spices. Maybe next week Fred will let me try a stir-fry. Probably not, though, because he’s not much of a stir-fry fan, since he’s WEIRD and all.

So, we reformatted my computer Saturday morning, just wiped it clean. I said to Fred, as the reformatting was going on, "I’m so excited! It’s like having a whole new computer!" And it really is. The only pain in the ass part is that I have to reinstall things like DreamWeaver (the software I use to make this site), Quicken, Office, etc. But everything’s working fine so far, knock on wood, so I think we finally beat the problem, thanks to Fred who is the MOST patient, MOST wonderful, MOST awesome geek of a husband a gal could ever hope to have.

Speaking of software and stuff, I discovered something this week that is just making my life SO much easier. Post-its software! I know the rest of the world has known about these for years and years – in fact, I recall reading about them on Willa‘s page ages ago – but I never got around to checking them out until recently. Little post-its that sit on your desktop until you trash them! Total genius!

Yes, the little things excite me.

< Yesterday, out of the blue, the spud decided that she was going to get rid of her Barbies. As I'm sure I've mentioned before, the spud has about every Barbie and every Barbie accoutrement in existence, and it takes up a large part of her room. She wanted me to give it all away to "kids who don't have any toys" (all together now, "awww!"), but I think I'm going to go through the box and keep some of it, 'cause if she has her own daughter someday, that'd be a pretty cool thing to pass on.

Sniff. My baby’s growing up!

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Keds to wear when I’m out running errands (it’s a bad bad thing to wear your exercise shoes when you’re doing something other than exercising, I’m told), and the black leather version on the Keds site are going for $35 a pair. Since that seemed somewhat pricey to me, I did a Google search to see if I could find them cheaper elsewhere. I didn’t manage to find cheaper Keds, but I did find the Keds Masturbation Manual page. Some people, it appears, have a Keds fetish. Takes all kinds, I guess. Fred has decided we’re going to start incorporating tofu into our diet on a semi-regular basis, and he bought some last night to try out. He read tons of recipes online, and decided to make "egg" salad with it – all you do is cut some of the tofu, mash the rest, and add whatever you’d put in egg salad – mayo, onion, whatever else you want. Fred did so and then decided it looked a little too white – needed some color, he said. So what did he add in the way of spices? Cumin and curry powder. You know, the stuff that smells like b.o. Since tofu takes on the taste of the foods around it, Fred had a big ol’ b.o. sandwich for dinner tonight. Myself, I had a Veggie Delight from Subway.
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My sister emailed me this morning, asking me to gather all my Puffkins in one place, take a picture of them, and send it to her. Like the obedient bitchypoo I am, I did so. I’m not sure why she wanted me to do such a thing, and I’m a little scared to ask. Aren’t they creepy all together like that, with their non-armed bodies and malevolent smiles? Like they’re going to wait until I’m asleep and advance upon me to rip my throat out with the sharp teeth they have hidden behind those fakey smiles.

I’ve spent a good part of the day making cds, so that I can delete the wavs taking up a huge amount of disk space. I’ve made 10 cds so far, and I’m only halfway through the "l"s. The most recent cd contained the following songs: lead me on, least complicated, leaving on a jet plane, mrs. robinson (the lemonheads version), let’s get it on (from high fidelity), letting go, life is a highway, life’s gonna suck (love that denis leary), life’s a dance, lightning crashes, linger, listen to your heart, little rock, long december, looks like we made it, loser, lotta love, and love of my life.

With a bit of persuading from me, Fred reluctantly agreed to let the spud keep two of the baby hamsters. My reasoning is that we can stick a female in with the mother and a male in with the father, and they’ll all have someone to play with.

I know what you’re thinking, people. Don’t ever doubt the bitchypoo, I always know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking If you had a clue how to tell which hamsters are girls and which are boys, you wouldn’t have this problem in the first place!

To which I, of course, must respond Bite me! No, actually what I’d like to say in my defense is that I was young and innocent and stupid and far FAR too trusting of the pet store guy who swore on his mother’s grave that both hamsters were boys. Now that we know what to look for – ie, a bulge by the tail (you’d think we’d’ve figured that out ourselves earlier, wouldn’t you?) – I’m a little more confident that we’ll have better luck.

Of course, how pissed am I going to be if I fuck it up royally and we end up with two more litters of baby hamsters in a couple of months, do ya think?

 

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Open mouth, insert foot, that’s my motto.
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should do is memorize the phone number of a local escort agency and give that out when someone asks for my phone number. Or the number to the police station. You think they’d notice anything was amiss if I gave my home phone number as "911"? —–]]>

Wonder. What I heard was Fate smiled at Destiny, and it felt like that was about us. So many things came together, and we met. I got a computer, I (eventually) got online, I wandered into Fred’s IRC channel, at the perfect time for us both. What if I hadn’t figured out how to get my incredibly crappy computer – bought for $50 from a friend’s husband – onto the local bbs? What if, after fooling around, I hadn’t discovered how to get on IRC? What if the default network hadn’t been Undernet, but rather Dalnet or Efnet? What if, what if, what if? I can actually strike fear into my heart by thinking of the what ifs, so I don’t very often let myself think of them. I like to think that Fate did, in fact, smile at Destiny and brought us together. That’s why today, our fifth anniversary, is such a big deal to me, that we need to celebrate the occasion of our meeting, which led to our falling in love, which led to our marriage, which will lead a long happy life together. If we’d never met, brought together by Fate and Destiny or not, all the rest would have been dust in the wind. Happy anniversary, baby. I love you. —–]]>